


This Waking Night

by goosecathedral



Category: Lyke-Wake Dirge (Traditional Song)
Genre: 16th Century CE, Age Difference, Biblical References, Capital Punishment, Christianity, Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, POV First Person, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Physical Disability, Wakes & Funerals, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 19:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10974192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goosecathedral/pseuds/goosecathedral
Summary: Robert Marlin, scrivener, adherent of the reformed faith, does not believe in Purgatory. But before bliss there must nonetheless be a testing, and a coming through.





	This Waking Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LoveChilde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoveChilde/gifts).



‘ _I will ther be no yong folk at my lyke waike but onlie xiij widweres & bachelars vpwarde of fortie yeere…_’

It was a peevish stipulation, I thought, uncharacteristic of the man I had known. But I had not met him these thirteen year, and would never again in this earthly life. The thing on the bier, waxen, beginning to discolour, was an empty case of flesh. It looked like, and not like, as corpses always do. I could not even say if the passing of time had been kind to his good looks. Perhaps widowerhood had soured him. Or he had expected to live well beyond forty years of age: his parents had both reached the Psalmist’s span; his mother was in her grave less than a year. 

I turned to his steward’s wife, Agnes. Her face was chalky and anxious. 

‘It seems I too am excluded upon a quibble,’ I said. 

‘I didn’t know you were wed, sir. My congratulations.’ 

The last word was spoken with genuine feeling. I should a thousand times rather have had irony. But a cripple whose daily sufferance of pain has dug trenches in his brow and whited his hair cannot afford to stand on dignity. ‘No, that peculiar felicity still eludes me,’ I said. ‘Hard as it is to believe, it’s age that is the bar. I’m a year younger than he—he was.’ The past tense somehow conjured Harry’s living body, in all the beauty and gaiety of young manhood, springing onto the parapet of the stone bridge, sprawled in the lee of the furze on the moors in high summer. Something prickled in my throat and behind my eyes. 

‘I don’t suppose anyone would notice, sir,’ quickly adding, for she was a kindly woman, ‘I mean, would trouble themselves to say owt.’ 

‘No. But the scrivener’s trade is apt to give one an exaggerated respect for these things. Jots and tittles, you know. I’ll keep my chamber. I have plenty of work to do.’ 

Despite Agnes’s plentiful supply of good candles, I looked at none of the papers in my satchel. Although the profane convivialities with which our grandfathers were wont to enliven a watch are these days deprecated, thirteen old men, none with hearing quite perfect, all amply furnished with strong ale and cider, may yet make a considerable din. But had they been as silent as he over whom they kept vigil, I think I still would have neither worked nor slept. I feared even to address myself to God, lest by so doing I should slip into the gross error of praying for a soul that was beyond help. Then bethinking me how sly is the Adversary who plants in our minds such subtle obstructions to the act most needful in man’s life, I delivered myself of some arid little orisons for judicious discharge of my duties. 

I smiled to realise that my imagination had failed me in a manner typical of persons in middle life, that in youth we swear we never shall allow: I had pictured young Edward as the small boy I remembered, not the man of nineteen that I knew him to be. I wondered if he resembled Harry at the same age, when our friendship was at its fervent zenith, we went everywhere arm-in-arm, and swore we loved as David and Jonathan, passing the love of women. It was of littler duration than some such attachments, though we had been bedfellows all our days in the grammar school, and for a little time afterwards, whenever he had business to transact in the town he also lodged in my father’s house. One such night he woke me with his tossing and turning (he usually slept a resistless lump, not even stirring in the midst of the night to piss or pray) and stumblingly confessed that he had got Kate Smurfoot, the miller’s daughter, with child. 

‘And I must marry her, mustn’t I, must I, must I really?’ 

The childishness of this outburst startled, then moved me. ‘Indeed you must, if you trust you are the father.’ 

He did not seem to have thought of that, and I felt him shift, as a beast long tethered does upon release. Then the price of his freedom came home to him, and he said, ‘Of course I am.’ 

I groped in the dark, drawing his head onto my shoulder. His heavy left leg overlapped my lame one, but I didn’t complain. I stroked his hair. ‘You could go a deal farther and do worse. She’s—handsome, and it’s the rare daughter of a mill leaves it without a sound understanding of household management.’ 

I could never like her, God forgive me. She knew it, and I daresay she knew why. John and Alice Smurfoot bred no fools. 

‘Oh, Robin. You always say the right thing.’ He gave a heaving sigh. I buried my nose in his curls, that smelled still of St John’s bonfires, and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. There was a long pause before he lifted his lips to mine, but then there was no stopping, none at all, for the length of that one night, but that night merely, and never again. 

Down in the hall the drone of the pipes began, and old men’s voices, unsteady, creaking, shrill. 

* 

Edward came with the dusk closing, as if he would outrun it, a muffled and tattered figure overpressing a hard-mouthed livery jade into a canter. 

Agnes, who was going about lighting candles and closing shutters, saw him first. She came with the news into the parlour, where I was engaged by Harry’s sister Margery and her husband, who had stayed on after the burial, ostensibly so Edward’s younger sisters Mary and Katharine, whom they fostered, might be there to greet him when he arrived from Oxford, but really to spy and interfere. George Williams thought he should be the executor of the estate and Edward’s guardian, and though I was not fully in concord with his innkeeper’s slops-and-sawdust mind on the point, I could not in honesty see why he _was_ not. There had never been any quarrel between me and Harry. But he came less often into Ripon after his marriage and Edward’s birth, and I meantime found a handful of friends who also held the religious convictions then shared by those who were a power in the land, but by few enough in conservative Yorkshire. I became sufficiently noisy in support of the reformed faith that I thought it prudent to go into the Low Countries upon the accession of Queen Mary, and returned five years later a sadder, quieter man, though one who could talk good Dutch and bad German. In London I rebuilt what small competence I had, but to a northerner people with the southern manners are always more or less impossible and hateful, so I returned again to the county of my birth, only to find myself regarded an honorary southron. It had been a long afternoon. 

I went to the window. Another horseman, the servant who had been sent with the message, was now visible, some distance behind, and as the two approached it seemed to me less that the shadows pursued them than that they gave birth to them, that the darkness had substance and the men none. 

‘No use t’lad laying on now,’ Williams grunted. It was no more redundant than anything else he had said since yesterday forenoon. I followed him into the hall. 

Despite the bustle of Agnes and a maidservant, or perhaps because of it, the hall seemed draughty and abandoned, as these days they do, when the harvest-labour has departed and yeomen copy the gentry in keeping to their small parlours as the long nights draw down. The thumps, whickerings and raised voices of a hasty dismounting could be heard outside. Agnes hurried to open the door. Harry had put up a speer of lath and painted cloth at one end of the hall, creating a meagre screens passage (pretentious, I thought it, as only the provincial can be) so we heard, but did not see, her exchange with Edward as she took his cloak and hat. His voice was heavy with fatigue, and he was still catching his breath, but I thought I heard the warmth in it that I remembered in Harry’s. ‘Agnes, dear—say I’m not too late, where—‘ 

‘Tha faither’s deid, maister Edward, and burried Thorsda.’ The simple gravity of the North Country speech brought to my eyes the heat of tears, though not their streams, accompanied by a pang, to realise Agnes had always answered me with southern forms. The flimsy partition lurched as he swung impetuously around it, and stared, bewildered, its orphan master, at the body of the house. 

And I stared too, because in appearance he was little less than archangel spoiled. An angel very much begrimed from the road, which rather enhanced his charms than diminished them; though, I reflected sternly, such attraction as we feel to minor imperfection is affirmation sure of the doctrine of total depravity. The beauties of his parents united in him: if he was a little shorter than his father’s six foot and a thumb’s breadth, his evident strength was more compact, his mother’s full, sturdy figure squared into masculinity. His complexion was hers—‘blake as whin,’ the old wives say, though I account it fair, for honey is sweeter than milk—but when light struck his close-cropped dark hair, it shone back Harry’s chestnut, and if his wide-set eyes, straight nose and full lips were all Harry, the jaw over which a few days’ reddish beard straggled was, like Kate’s, more decisively carved. His beautiful face made a visible, callow effort at self-possession; my heart swelled with an affection I knew was fraught with hazard, and I consciously hardened it. 

He inclined his head and opened his hands, which if also very dirty, were of astonishingly fine mould. 

‘Aunt—Uncle—how kind of you to stop.’ 

Little Katharine made to throw her arms about his waist; Mary put a hand on her shoulder with that odd feminine instinct to guard a man’s fragile self-composure. I wonder why women do it, when their reward is to have all our lachrymosity attributed to them. Edward kissed them both, then turned to me, took in my puny frame, rusty subfusc and crooked foot, and said, with all the light arrogance of a young earl, ‘And who in Christ’s name or the devil’s are _you_?’ 

He later apologised for it, and I could have wished he had not, for he was ten times more captivating abashed than conceited, and I knew anyway that the incivility proceeded from fatigue and shock. In the moment, however, my dignity discovered only the retort that necessitous, proud and precarious men have made since Adam was banished Eden. 

‘A gentleman, sir.’ 

My fingers found the hilt of my dagger; the Williamses did not bother to hide their glee. 

’Master Marlin is our guardian, Ned,’ Mary said, stepping forward. ‘He oversees our affairs till you are twenty-one.’ My travails would be much reduced, I thought, (it was far from the last time I would think it) did I have to deal with this slip of fifteen instead of her brother. But so too would my delights. 

Edward gave me a dim, calfish look, which I would learn was significant of both recollection and apprehension in him. ‘Robert Marlin? Father’s old friend?’ 

I nodded. 

‘You stood godfather to me, didn’t you?’ 

‘Yes. And sadly deficient in my office.’ I had always considered infant baptism efficacious, and the custom of sponsorship a creditable one (though I disavow spiritual consanguinity) but this seemed nonetheless to edge upon territory somewhat ticklish. ‘I hope, belatedly, to supply a little of the want.’ 

‘It’s all right,’ Edward said, vaguely. ‘I had another, another uncle, but he is dead.’ The word recalled to him his loss, and his mouth opened in a ghastly misericord grimace. Tears tracked a silent path through the dirt on his face. Mary embraced him. Katharine sat in the floor-rushes, her thick broadcloth kirtle making a madder-coloured tuffet around her. ‘Don’t,’ she said, pushing her fists into her eyesockets, ‘don’tdontdontdontdontdontdont.’ 

Her aunt hauled her to her feet with reprimands concerning the proper conduct of a Christian child. My eye met George Williams’ with the sympathy of desperation: the faintly hostile banalities of the parlour now seemed a fine basis for cordial acquaintance. 

‘Eh—happen we should gang within,’ Williams said. 

‘Yes—Agnes,’ I called, ‘would you bring us—' 

Edward raised his head and released Mary from his arms. ‘No,’ he said, the ghost of that lordly, courteous self-assurance passing across his face once more. He dismissed it promptly by wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘I mean, do set supper, Agnes, for George and Margery and the girls. Have Bet bring up hot water to—to—the—my bedchamber. It is made up? Good. Master Marlin, may I have the honour of your company while I dress? I’d like some privy conference with you.’ 

Such early test of my chastity made me blanch. We must needs be bedfellows, I realised, for immutable laws of hospitality required the guests take the parlour bed, and the new master of the house could hardly sleep on a truckle in his sisters’ chamber while I occupied the main one, nor I couch in the hall like a servingman. But I had hoped to have some interval to pray for continence before I saw him naked. I said, ‘Certainly. Let me fetch my satchel from the parlour.’ 

So preoccupied was I, indeed, that I had both feet upon the ladder before looking up, and saw the maidservant descending, her petticoats bundled in one hand and a bucket in the other. I drew back before the vista quite became obscene, but my halt step made it a close thing, and she gave me a very narrow look and sniffed haughtily. 

The prospect that greeted me at the top of the steps, conversely, was rather too much to my taste. Stripped to the waist, Edward bent over a tub on a trestle before the hearth, rinsing his face. His shoulders were broad and supple, the muscles of his back picked out by the candlelight’s masterful brushstroke, his middle slender as a sapling. He straightened, shaking his damp head, and the smooth curve at the base of his spine occasioned my lapse into outright lechery, in imagining the completion of the line. 

Finding my throat dry, I cleared it. 

He twisted about; like Harry, he had the gift of instant welcome with a smile: his teeth were good, though one was stained where it had chipped. 

‘Hello—hold on a moment.’ He went to the panelled box settle and opened the seat. ‘The clothes I brought were in a fearful state. Got a ducking fording Demains Beck, of all things, but I suppose it’s always something in the last five miles that catches you. It feels curious, wearing—his.’ He gathered the linen, breeches and doublet into his arms and flung it on the bed, then nodded me to the settle, from which I had a too-advantageous view of his ablutions. 

He soaped his torso—the hair was sparse on his breast, but thatched dense in his oxters, and formed a dark mossy trail that began above his navel and disappeared into the waistband of his slops, which, unpointed, had dropped to his hipbone—then looked down, stirring the water. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and when he raised his head again his cheeks were a fetching dusky pink, ‘to have greeted you in that loutish fashion.' 

‘It’s all right. You’d taken somewhat of a knock.’ 

‘You see, I remember you.’ 

‘Really? You were very young.’ 

‘Yes. You gave Father a tiercel goshawk. I was madly covetous, but he wouldn’t budge. Father, I mean.’ He rinsed and towelled his chest and arms. 

‘Quite right. You were far too small to man a gos.’ I heard my own voice, prim and elderly. ‘And Holofernes had some nasty habits, as I remember. What happened to him?’ 

‘Raked away.’ He dragged off his slops, nearly bringing his drawers with them. I kept my eyes steadily on his face, his face was very fair. Too steadily, perhaps, but to avert them entirely would have been in the character of an admission, to myself, if not to him. 

‘To be expected, I suppose.’ I said. ‘Melancholy when it happens, though.’ 

He bent to untie his garters. ‘I was rude to you then, too.’ 

‘I remember a well-mannered little boy.’ I winced inwardly. Had ever man sounded so grossly avuncular? It was for the best, I thought, but I would still rather he did not find me repulsive. 

He hopped, removing a stocking. ‘I said I wondered that you knew so much about horses, being—being lame, and Mama clipped my ear, but you said fine words would not straighten your foot, and a man might compensate for physical deficiency with learning, as long as it was of a sound and practical kind.’ 

‘My word. What an odious young pedant I must have been.’ 

‘No. You were—I was impressed. I’ve never forgotten it. Ugh.’ He cradled his left foot, examining a crumbling, discoloured big toenail, then dropped it, and took up a clout to wash his legs. 

‘Now we’re even; you’ve made me blush for my younger self. But _haec olim meminisse iuvabit_ , as the fellow said.’ 

He paused, his fingers on the drawstring of his smallclothes. ‘I do already. I took one of those childish fancies—drove Father out of his wits, asking when Cousin Robin—may I be familiar, by the way?’ 

‘Of course.’ 

He let his drawers drop. His face, his fair face, his face was very fair to look upon, and so I looked upon it. He lathered between his legs, took up the clout again, rinsed and wrung it. 

‘And I’m Ned, naturally.’ 

‘Naturally.’ 

‘Anyroad, I was forever asking when Cousin Robin would come again. And he said you were gone out of England, but if I wanted you to come back I should never say your name to anyone, it was like a magic charm. Mama said you were dead. It was—confusing.’ 

I considered the differences thereby disclosed in Harry and Kate’s respective characters, but said only, ‘I daresay. What were you, five years of age?’ 

His fair face being bent, with the comical earnestness that one tends to bring to the task, on washing his prick and bollocks, I turned my eyes to the rafters and took a deep, controlled breath, my eyelids fluttering giddily. I hoped the fire, a goodly one, supplied sufficient explanation for the heat in my cheeks. The heat in my groin must be repented at leisure. 

‘Then I forgot you. Faithless brutes, boys.’ He patted himself dry. He turned to take clean drawers from the pile on the bed, and God forgive me, I looked, with lust enough to make my member rise, on an arse tauter and more shapely than Pollaiuolo’s imagination could contrive, firm as the pale sandstone which was also the colour of his skin, shadows thrown by candlelight collecting in the muscular hollows and the deep, delicious crack. 

‘It was just now, when I got a moment to myself,’ he continued, stepping into the underclothes and tying the string, ‘that I did my sums and realised—why, and what you must b—‘ 

‘What I must be?’ It came out sharper than I meant. 

His head emerged through the collar of the shirt, his expression puzzled, almost hurt. ‘I was going to say _believe_. It can’t have been easy for you, back then, around here. Even now.’ 

‘No. The North remembers, and a man who thinks its Catholicism is error does well to remember that its temporal grievances are real enough. But anygait along, I have foregone some of my zeal. There’s nothing inclines a fellow to moderation quite like being stuck in an impossibly costly city on a dank Dutch fen with three dozen hungry Englishmen all desperately reassuring themselves that a general aversion to stakes, chains and faggots casts no aspersions on Christian manhood.’ 

He laughed richly, admiring more than the little sally deserved. I swelled almost to bursting, then sank back in horror. Like many men who suffer some deformity, I learned in boyhood to deflect my peers’ persecutions with wit; my bent was unfortunately to satire, rather than genial clowning. I endeavoured to suppress it as an offence against charity, and thought I had mostly succeeded, yet, here I was, traducing some of the most godly and noble men I had ever known for the fleeting approbation of a pretty boy not half my age. I was (crushing rebuke of my childhood) _showing off_. 

Ned discovered that he could fit his fist between his belly and the waist of his father’s breeches. ‘Christ’s teeth,’ he said, ‘the life of a servitor doesn’t suit me.’ 

My attempt at not pursing my lips must have failed, because he said, ‘Sorry, coz. It’s given me a profane tongue, too.’ 

‘It’s not that—just that I dreamed of going to one of the Universities.’ 

‘You wouldn’t have if you knew what it was like. Dog’s abuse, and worse food. The gentlemen commoners have it all right, I suppose. Hunting, hawking and never so much as looking at a book.’ 

‘But the company of men of learning—the _libraries_ —’ 

‘They’re sad cavillers—quite the reverse of _sound and practical_. And wretchedly conformist, out of no true conviction, but timidity.’ It excited me to think he might be of my mind in religious matters: I imagined our two heads bent over the one Testament, the conversations we might have, the debates. But it was likelier he swung the other way, and was—no, it could not be that my sweet Ned was damned, I would not allow it. 

‘You won’t return to take your degree? I could arrange for someone to manage the place, if you wanted to.’ 

‘Good Lord, no. What’s the use of a yeoman farmer with a BA? It was different when Father—‘ he choked, and checked himself. ‘I wouldn’t pass, anyway. I’m a dunce. Should never have gone past the grammar school. I barely kept my exhibition last term.’ He fastened the last of his points and put on slippers. 

‘Well then, tomorrow we’ll begin going through things. Some of it’s a bit intricate—certain things, inevitably, weren’t tied up.’ 

‘Yes. Shall we go down?’ He offered me a hand out of the chair, so friendly and boyish a gesture, as when children at play pull one another up from the ground, that I couldn’t resent it. Anyway, I wanted to touch him. His beautiful hand was warm, dry, hard and cracked—as a servitor, he would perform the offices of a scullion for Fellows in his college. He looked at me with a fearful directness. 

‘How did he die, Robin?’ 

‘The mortal cause was the aposthume in his jaw—he took a fever from it. As to—I was not here.’ 

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Most people say _awake, lucid, and well-comforted he was in a state of grace_.’ 

‘I have a perfectly catastrophic attachment to the Eighth Commandment. And I’ve nursed a man dying of poison in the blood. A courageous man.’ 

‘Yes. One of our Fellows—I wasn’t there at the end, but.’ He squeezed my hand and released it. Tears stood in his eyes. He looked hurriedly into the fire. ’Thank you.’ 

‘What for? I’d been back in Yorkshire almost nine months when I heard he was dead, and I’d never so much as called—there was always tomorrow.’ 

‘For not telling me sugared lies.’ 

‘I’ll never do that. I promise.’ 

‘You swear—no, you’re a _be your communication yea yea, nay nay_ sort, aren’t you?’ 

‘Not if I have to take a case to court. But yes, in private life, naturally.’ 

‘Naturally,’ he said, gently teasing. He touched my shoulder lightly, and gave one of his dazzling smiles. 

We snuffed the candles, and descended, Ned frontways, with the light step of a ship’s boy, I gingerly, backwards, and unreservedly, irrevocably, hopelessly in love. 

Over the days that followed Ned—God bless him!—did nothing whatever to assuage my agony, in the charming innocence of his outgoing nature using me with much more than the hospitality that was my due. He had not yet shaken off the manners of an undergraduate, and was wont to slip his arm through mine as we made a tour of the farm’s outbuildings and fields, to greet me as I worked at the table in the hall by planting his hands upon my shoulders, to fling himself at my feet as we sat around the parlour fire after supper, and lean his cheek against my knee as I read aloud from the Scriptures. We continued bedfellows after the Williamses’ departure (Mary and Katharine were to stay at least to keep Christmas); he said, blushing fiercely, that it would save Agnes the trouble of three sets of sheets, then confessed, reaching for my hand, he feared to sleep alone in the bed wherein his father had died. 

‘You will have to, come All Hallows. I can’t expect my poor clerk to conduct all my business indefinitely. The carrier came with a very plaintive letter this morning.’ 

‘Oh, I’ll be all right by then. Just—just—until—oh, never mind.’

‘What?’ 

‘No. It’s daft. You’re the last person who would understand.’ 

‘Very well—' I have oft occasion to observe that disclosure follows easily on the release of pressure, and so it was. 

‘Just, just—well, the night _before_.’ 

‘ _Ned_. That’s very much worse than daft, and you know it. Come, say the Lord’s Prayer with me, and repent your superstition.’ 

He snatched away his hand, leapt up from the paper-strewn hall table, and paced. ‘No. Pray with _me_. For his soul.’ 

I was shaken to the quick of my being; for all the hazards I perceived in our growing intimacy, this had not been one. ‘Dear boy, you’re not yourself. You know it’s futile, as well as sinful. The dead are beyond our help. _And as it is appointed unto men that they shall once dye and after that cometh the judgement_ , and the Preacher says _if the tree doe fall toward the South, or toward the North, in the place that the tree falleth, there it shall be._ ' 

He turned on his heel and gaped at me, gargoyle-faced. ‘Jesu. Do you ever listen to yourself? _in the place that the tree falleth, there it shall be, dear boy. The dead are beyond our help, dear boy._ ’ The impersonation was savagely precise, though I suppose my high-pitched and emphatic voice is easy to imitate. ‘Happen it is that people—ordinary people, not the sublimed souls of Geneva—need a little comfort, need to feel like there’s something they can _do_ for the salvation of those they loved, and their own, and that’s why they cleave to the old forms? Christ’s prick, you’re an unfeeling cur.’ 

‘I own have never understood why people should want false comfort,’ I said coldly. ‘And Ned, while I wink at some of your oaths, I do not at that last. I’ve not insisted upon the courtesies due my age from your youth, because I should like a friendship of equals to subsist between us, but that doesn’t mean you can swear like a sapper in my presence.' 

He made a derisive noise, planted his fists on the table, and put his nose an inch from mine. His dark eyes glittered, and I smelled the onions we had eaten at dinner on his breath. ‘That’s not all you want to _subsist_ between us, is it?’ he whispered. ‘Admit it.’ 

I flinched, betraying myself, I fear. I turned my head slowly and addressed the jagged edge of a chirograph, ‘I care for your interests, Edward, for the love I bore your father, and the affection I have for you. But you’re trying it rather now, so I suggest you—' I looked him straight in the eye once more, ‘get out of my sight.’ Had he lingered an instant longer than he did before striding petulantly for the screens passage, I should have kissed him, and in no brotherly wise. 

I sunk my head into my hands, trembling. I had almost regained self-control when Mary came into the hall. 

She said, ‘I saw Edward go out. Don’t pay him any mind. When he comes back in again he will beg your forgiveness. He and Father—they were very close. But they used to quarrel too. He doesn’t know how upset he is, if that makes any sense.’ 

‘Yes. You’re a wise lass. You'll make some man very happy.’ 

‘Oh, I shan’t marry,’ she said lightly. 

‘Well, you’re over-young to think of it yet, that’s true. But I daresay you’ll change your mind.’ 

Her pale, determined face clenched like a fist. ‘People always say that. Old people, I mean. And you didn’t, did you?’ 

There was no harm in candour, up to a point. 'No. But men have other things to occupy them.’ 

‘Women would too, if you let us. It’s a waste. I’m better at arithmetic than Ned.’ 

‘I don’t doubt it. That oak dresser is better at arithmetic than Ned.’ 

‘I mean I’m actually good. Better than Father, too. I used to check his accounting, after Mama died. But he wouldn’t learn me Latin. He said it would make me barren, and I said good, when do we start?’ 

I laughed despite myself. 'That’s a wicked thing to wish. But it won’t, you know. There are very learned ladies who are mothers of great broods. I could show you some of these indentures, if you like. It won’t help you read Virgil, but it might come in useful.’ 

She nodded happily. In truth, she was a better pupil than Ned: docile, and unsure of herself, but more curious, and quicker to perceive pattern and system. And she could tot a column of figures as quickly and accurately as I could myself. Her readiness to learn loosened my tongue, and I found myself speaking, perhaps too freely, of the adjustments that would need to be made if the farm was to be dragged back into a state resembling solvency. 

‘And these arrears must be collected, or—' 

She shook her head, wide-eyed. ‘That’s Goody Ashe. She does as she pleases.’ 

‘Then the goodwife will be pleased to pay up, or be served with notice of eviction.’ 

Mary set her jaw. ‘No. I know you don’t credit such things, so I won’t say more.’ 

‘Let me guess,’ I said dryly. ‘She heals warts, divines fortunes, and sells love-philtres. And when business slackens on those, she accosts the nearest credulous ninny and says his neighbour paid her to curse his cow, but if he buys this simple to counter it—' 

‘—and perhaps he might be interested in getting his revenge with this poppet. I suppose they’re the same the world all over, aren’t they?’ 

‘They are certainly. But since our anointed rulers are grown credulous also, it’s now a felony without benefit of clergy. She could hang. She should, too, though for extortion.’ 

‘Oh, no! I saw—I saw a woman hanged, in York, when uncle took us. It was horrid. I was sick whenever I thought of it, for days. She wasn’t a witch, though. Just a horse-thief.’ 

‘The point is, my dear, you can’t have someone squatting and demanding money with menaces on your holding. A point I must make to your delinquent brother, when he comes in drunk from whatever alehouse he’s in now.’ 

‘How do you know he’s—' 

‘Because I’ve been an angry young man of nineteen. Too long ago. Now, run along. I’m sure Agnes has something for you to do.’ 

Ned lurched in when the rest of the household had retired, and I was at my prayers. Sentimental and lachrymose, yet somehow truculent, like his father in the same condition, he begged my pardon on his knees, which was too suggestive a posture for me not to give it immediately, dragging him to his feet, whereupon he wetly kissed my cheek. We went to bed friends again, though I would not have wished the foul air and hellish trumpetings of that night upon any enemy of mine. 

The difficulty of Goody Ashe resolved itself, in a manner of speaking, almost before I had time to open the matter to Ned. Like many such solutions, it proved more terrible than the original problem. It seemed that the patience of some of her marks had finally been outworn, and as dusk fell on All Hallows Eve, they surrounded her mean abode with the intention of breaking in and beating her. But when they finally mustered their courage, it being the sort that comes out of a barrel, they found the hovel empty but for the miscellaneous livestock they called familiars, and put to the knife. They smashed the place about, and tried to fire it by kicking the banked embers out of the open hearth; it did not burn to the ground, but was left uninhabitable even by one who had a nanny-goat to her bedmate. It was said that she flew through the roof-clearance, but of course someone tipped her the nod, and she ran for our house as better sanctuary than the church. Too many of her persecutors depended on the farm in some way to follow her there. 

I discovered this history only after coming in upon her in the hall, trying to claw Mary’s eyes out. The girl’s screams drew Agnes and Bet shortly after, and together we pulled the old woman off her. Her clothes had once been fine, but were tattered and larded with dirt, and she stank, of old tallow, piss and ale. Her face was fat and swollen like a toad’s, but when I grasped her greasy middle to drag her back, I could feel her ribs, frail through her bodice, and fearing I had cracked them, released her with a shout. She turned on me and spat foul obscenities. The great advantage to being called a sodomite by the like of Goody Ashe is that it lengthens the odds that people will believe it, but it’s still moderately unpleasant. Bet and Agnes seized her and marched her into custody in the kitchen, still screeching, leaving me with Mary, unhurt except for a raking scratch that, as far as I could see, had not properly broken the skin, but stood pink and angry from her grey face, running from the outer edge of her eye to the corner of her lip. 

She reeled; I caught her about the shoulders and helped her into the parlour. 

‘Up on the bed, there’s a lass.’ 

‘I’m not going to _faint_ ,’ she said indignantly. And indeed her colour was returning. ‘I’m not the fainting sort.’ 

‘I’ve never known a woman who was. Men are a different tale. Most of us don’t see nearly enough of our own blood.’ That was indelicate, but she grinned and giggled. ‘But all the same. Good girl. I’ll get Bet to fetch you in some cordial wine, and something to bathe that scratch. Wait there a moment.’ 

I went into the hall and called for these commodities, and then returned. I sat on the edge of the bed. 

‘Do you want to tell me what happened?’ 

‘She came to the hall door and said there was a parcel of rogues lying in wait for her to beat her to death. They’ve tried before. Agnes was all for turning her away, but I said we couldn’t, because _inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me_. So we gave her some bread and small ale, but she was in the way in the kitchen, and scaring Kath a bit, so I took her into the hall. I asked her about when she was a girl, in the convent. I know monks and nuns were corrupted and vile, but I do wish, I do so wish—’ 

Bet’s characteristic sniff fortuitously interrupted this aspiration. 

‘There’s t’cordial wine you wanted, maister, and hot water wi a spot of honey.’ 

‘Thank you, Bet,’ Mary said. ‘Put the board on the bed there. I’ll bathe it myself.’ 

‘Mind you do it while the water’s scalding, mistress. What’ll we do about t’old woman, sir? We quieted her, and she’s fell asleep by t’fire, but we can’t be giving her flet.’ 

‘Leave her rest until the young master comes in. Keep an eye on her. She’ll pocket anything that’s not nailed down.’ 

‘Very well, sir.’ She havered, unsure if her chaperonage was required, seemed to conclude I was as the unicorn, harmless to virgins, and bobbed her departure. I could have wished she had not. 

I poured wine while Mary patted her face with the warm clout. 

‘What happened then?’ I asked. ‘You were talking about her days in the convent.’ 

‘Yes. At first it was funny, she was telling a story about two of the sisters who had been enemies since King Edward—not the late one, of course, the old one—and they both stood in line to be Prioress, but then she got sidetracked and started talking about the chaplain, who,' she sipped her wine, and frowned, clearly resolving to be clear-spoken and not coy, ‘behaved lewdly with the some of the sisters. Not her, she said, but I think she was lying.’ 

‘No surprise, my dear, but it was wrong of her to talk to a maiden girl of such iniquities.’ 

She shook her head. 'I mean, they didn’t want him to. He forced them. He got one of them with child, and—well, you don't need to know that bit. I told her to hold her peace, I wouldn’t listen, and she flew at me, saying that I needn’t think I’d be spared, my ape-gentry mincing wouldn’t keep me from falling on my back for the first knave who came along.’ 

She blinked hard and bit her lip. It made her look about half her years. Whatever little of fatherliness there is in me was suddenly and ferociously aroused. I took her cup and put it aside, clasping her cold hand. 

‘The vicious hag. Upsetting you like that.’ 

‘ _She_ didn’t. It happens, doesn’t it?’ 

‘Not to you, sweeting. Not while Ned has breath in his body and strength in his sword arm. Or I mine, for that matter. For whatever that’s worth.’ 

‘I don’t care, oh, you don’t see—you don’t understand at all. I shouldn’t need anyone’s protection. Men should just—just stop—' She rocked forward, sobbing, and leaned her brow against my shoulder. I put my free arm around her. 

‘Men are sinners all, my love. Trust in God.’ 

‘He—he won’t—' she hiccuped. 

‘Shh. Despair is the soul’s birdlime, set by the evil one. Keep away from it.’ I held her to me. Her firm small body minded me indeed of a bird, not a lark to be limed, but a pullet, and from that I thought of my nurse, whose chickens were ever escaping the coop, causing her unceremoniously to drop her clubfoot charge on the ground, and fly after them, clucking, a very hen in woman’s shape. So lost was I in that (I think, in all truth, my earliest) memory, that I did not at first apprehend the character of the kiss planted on the margin of bare flesh between my beard, my collar and my earlobe. Thinking it a child’s thanks for comfort rendered, I returned it to the half-inch of hair between her forehead and her coif, and made to break the embrace, when she flung herself passionately, though dryly, at my lips. I jerked my head away, haunted by the sensation of Ned’s drunken slobber and rustic whiskers (he had decided that he would play the part of a yeoman farmer better did he not shave; it didn't altogether suit him) on my cheek. I had never made myself quite this popular anywhere before. 

‘Stop it! Mary, what do you mean by this?’ 

Her mouth moved soundlessly, and her red-rimmed eyes were round with horror and shame. ‘Isn’t it—plain? I’m in love—‘ 

‘You are no such thing. How old do you think I am, lass?’ 

‘Younger than Father—'

‘A year younger. Two score this coming St Lucy’s Day, if you prefer accuracy.’ I stood up, dusting the front of my doublet for want of something to occupy my hands. ‘I suppose it is well that you don’t listen to bawdy ballets and the like, but don’t you know what they say about old men matched to young maids?’ 

Her face was aflame with indignation; she pressed her white-knuckled fists together over her stomacher. ‘That’s just it, don’t you see? You’re gentle, and kind, and—and—old. So if I married you I wouldn’t have to—you wouldn’t make me, would you?’ 

Now my cheeks were blazing also. ’Mary, listen. It is as a daughter I regard you, and love you certainly, but no more, and no less.’ 

She swung her feet to the ground. ‘Then it should follow that you love Ned as a son. But that’s not how it is, is it?’ 

She swept past me, wounded dignity in epitome. I reached for my untouched cup of wine, drank it in a draught, banged the cup on the board, picked up hers, and drained that too. Tomorrow night I would be back in my own lodgings in town, sleeping in my own bed, I thought, with what I pretended was pure relief, no alloy of dismay in it. I must needs keep my distance, coming here strictly on matters of business. ‘Damn you, Harry,’ I said aloud. ‘Why couldn’t you have amended your will, and not left me nursemaid to a brace of volatile adolescents?’ I recoiled at the bitterness of the sentiment, but _in the place that the tree falleth, there it shall be_. 

‘Hullo, Cousin Robin.’ I turned, laboriously; it wasn’t one of my foot’s better days. Katharine stood in the doorway, pigeon-toed. She scratched her nose, and said matter-of-factly, ‘Were you talking to Father’s ghost?’ 

‘No, not exactly. Ghosts—in the sense I think you mean—are just make-believe.’ 

She looked openly incredulous. 

‘When we die, our souls are judged upon the instant. And no man here on earth knows the nature of that judgement. But restive souls don’t walk up and down in the world, not really. Only in stories.’ 

A look of alarm succeeded that of disbelief. ’But Father is in heaven, isn’t he?’ 

‘Yes, yes, of course. And your Mama.’ 

‘But you said we didn’t know.’ 

‘If you are justified—I mean, if you’re a good and believing Christian, you’ll be saved. Jesus promises us that.’ I thought of the fearsome doctrine of Calvin, which I could no longer countenance, that some are pricked out for damnation, not merely left in the perdition in which they have willingly involved themselves. Merciful and just, I said to myself, he is merciful and just, and aloud, ‘Now what did you _want_ , Kath? My foot’s rather sore, and—' 

‘It’s the witch.’ 

‘She has a name,’ I reproved. 

‘Missis Ashe.’ (‘Mistress’ was above her station, but it would do.) ‘She won’t wake up. Ned’s home, and we tried to wake her to talk to him, but she won’t wake up. She’s not dead. She lies on her back and shakes like this.’ She opened her mouth, rolled her eyes back in her head and clawed the air. 

‘All right, that’s enough. Nothing to be afraid of. It sounds like the falling sickness. She’s probably come round by now.’ 

But she had not, and did not. It was not an epilepsy, but a paralytic palsy, a stroke of the hand of God. She never recovered her wits. Agnes and Bet undressed and washed her, put her in a clean shift and laid her in a truckle bed in the kitchen, where she feebly twitched her ulcerated, beshitten limbs for three days. The parson was sent for, a weak-minded creature, he read his litanies and scurried away. She would choke on any sustenance we attempted to give her, so I suppose it was drought she died of, an end as cruel as that of a traitor hanged in chains, if she knew anything of it, and damnation sure if she did not. 

And so, for the second time in less than a month, the house held a lyke-wake. This one was attended only by me and Ned; Mary wanted to, but Katharine would not go to bed without her. Bet and Agnes washed the corpse, but would not watch, saying, not without justice, that they had as good as laid her out twice, and that was Christian duty enough to do a heathenish sort like Nell Ashe. We watched in the parlour, that they and the other servants might have run of the hall. The village shunned Goody Ashe entirely, of course. 

Ned collapsed onto the settle. Midnight was yet two hours distant, and he was already rather less than sober. 

‘Hardly seems just, does it? Here I am to wake a damned witch, when I never even saw Father buried.’ 

‘He didn’t want anyone young to sit the vigil,’ I said. ‘Did I say that? No man under forty. So not even me.’ 

‘Aren't you?’ he said, with mild interest. ‘I should have done it anyway, if I were you.’ 

‘No-one would have noticed, you mean.’ I sat down on the small eighth of the settle not occupied by Ned’s sprawl. 

‘It’s only because your beard is grey. Your face looks quite young. Pleasant-looking, in candlelight, anyway. Jove, give me your cup.’ 

‘Ned. Go easy. Don’t get carried away.’ 

He smiled lazily, and poured for both of us. 

‘No, seriously. You should have waked Father. Because you loved him. If he’s in Heaven he’ll look with laughter on those crabbed stipulations, and if he’s not,’ he curled his upper lip with self-conscious hardiness, ‘he’s got other things to worry about.’ 

‘A will is a deed. You fulfil the freaks and fancies on the same understanding as the property transfer. It keeps everything working.’ 

‘Always so crisp and logical. Must you really go in the morning, Robin?’ 

‘Yes. My clerk expected me back four days ago. I wrote, of course, but the carrier’s not always to be relied on. He’s probably given me up for dead. And my housekeeper certainly has. She can’t read.’ 

‘She’s probably sublet your rooms. You’ll go back and find a women’s tailor and his two wives and eighteen children in there, all living off three cheeseparings, a pork rind and half an onion. And then we’ll never be rid of you. Mary would like that. Since you taught her _ad coelum_ and _fructus naturales_ it’s been nothing but bonny sweet Robin is all my joy.’ 

‘She’s a good pupil. Not like her jealous and idle brother.’ 

‘I’m not jealous.’ His gentle cuff to the back of my head trailed into something like a caress. I took a deep breath, and did not rise to it. 

Ned sighed heavily and went over to the bier. ‘Ugly bitch, wasn’t she? No doubt about her destination.’ 

‘She may have had consciousness enough to make her peace with God.’ 

He put his handkerchief to his mouth; despite Agnes’s efforts with dried lavender and crushed cloves, the air was not sweet. ‘Hardly likely, is it? In another England, she’d be lying in a priory chapel after seventy years with nothing more eventful than a stolen altar-cloth or a to-do over the bishop’s visitation behind her.’ 

‘There is only one England, and God’s will for it. And I suspect you overestimate the tranquillity of conventual life.’ 

He returned for his cup. ’God’s will for it? You say it so calmly, as if there were not troops of the houseless on our roads, walking the length of the country to seek relief. As if people didn’t die in ditches and live in caves, eating carrions and watercresses. I would rather have a few fat monks than so very many lean beggars, Robin.’ He look of compassion was very lovely, and I shivered, felt my pulse begin to speed. 

‘There’s no scriptural warrant for it. It’s error, leading a whole nation astray to put pottage in the bellies of Bedlamites and vagabonds.’ 

‘They should not be obliged to buy their salvation with starvation. That’s worse than chantries and indulgences.’ He drained and refilled his cup, waggling the jug in my direction. I shook my head. 

‘It is the duty of every Christian to give alms, as it is to repent and pray. We cannot put those out to tender.’ 

‘Funny thing for a broker to say. Imagine if we took that attitude to earthly affairs. You’d be on the road, half-naked under a whin-bush or starving beneath a bridge, for one. I wonder if you’d be as complacent then.’ 

His look of self-satisfaction rather increased than diminished his attractions: he frankly pouted, and the insolent gleam in his eye invited present correction. Provoked, I abandoned detached and rational argument. ‘I’ve been closer to it than I hope you’ll ever be. But maybe having to flee your place with only the clothes you stand up in and the coins in your purse, and do it more than once, isn’t proof enough for you. Happen the little gentleman has a fine palate, and is only satisfied by roast flesh.’ 

‘Jesu, Robin. Your conviction isn’t in doubt, nor your courage. But weren’t you ashamed, to put all that valour at the service of a church founded on a king’s lust to fuck wherever he would and not be called a fornicator?’ 

If he hoped to shock me, he succeeded, for as matters stand in our times a boy's boast of treason will see his bowels put before his eyes as surely as a man's act of it. But I wasn’t about to let him know my alarm. 'Your limbs are very comely in their present configuration, my dear. They’d make but poor ornament for the four corners of Micklegate Bar.’ 

‘Think you so?’ 

‘I know so. Spare me an apoplexy and say you’ve spoken nothing of the sort outside these walls.’ 

‘I mean,’ he said, putting his foot up on the seat and leaning forward on his knee, ‘if you think I’m so decorative, why do you hesitate to enjoy me?’ 

My ears roared, my skin was all over liquid fire, and it seemed the agile cords of my tongue were cut, but these felt not like torments but rewards. ‘Ned, you’re drunk.’ 

‘And you’re in love with me, but in the morning I’ll be sober.’ 

‘Why, you saucy bawcock—' I pushed his chest; he lurched, saving himself but not his cup. 

‘Leave it,’ he said, sitting down and slipping his arm around my shoulder. Such proximity to his hot and hardy vigour, always intoxicating, was now close to intolerable. Rigid with desire and expectation, I ached for release at his hands and his lips. ‘There should be a bit of rough music at a wake. Especially for one such as—’ 

‘And tell me, do you always wait until there’s a corpse in the room before you seduce someone?’ 

‘ _Me_ , wait? If you’d wanted you might have had me any time this last fortnight. Was it not clear?’ 

‘I thought your affection innocent. And then that you were gulling me.’ 

‘As to the former, so it is, but the latter, never. When you had promised never to tell me lies? I’m sorry you think so poorly of me, Robin. Are you going to kiss me anyway?’ He lowered his eyes and touched the corner of his mouth with his tongue; the effect, most fortunately, was rather more absurd than alluring. 

‘No. If I do I shan’t be able to stop, and we have a watch to keep.’ 

‘You’ll stay another night, then?’ 

‘Yes. If I don’t burst. I feel like the village mob have blown me up to play football with.’ 

He clasped my head against his shoulder and stroked it with heavy, aggressive hand. He was quivering like a high-strung Arabian horse; I was sure his prick must be hard, as mine certainly was. It was all I could do not to put out my hand to verify it. ‘And then?’ he said shakily. 

‘In truth I can’t think beyond that coming night. But it won’t do, will it? A ward and his guardian; godfather and godson. A reviled and a capital crime.’ 

He released me suddenly and sprang to his feet. The limber movement was Harry reborn, and I gasped. ‘No, don’t say that. It’s friendship, true friendship, a benevolent accord in all things, _an excepta sapientia nihil melius homini sit a dis inmortalibus datum_. That cannot be a crime.’ His face took on its bovine, apprehending expression. ‘Robin, did you and Father—‘ 

I had given my word, so I said, ’One night, one night only.’ To mention that the occasion of it was the quickening of him in his mother's womb were superfluous as well as obscurely unsettling. 

He nodded, something understood. 'One night, one coming night, one waking night. How shall we pass this one?’ 

Already more than delirious, and not in any case sure that I did not dream, I think then I was as Virgil, plucked by the ear, by Cynthius smitten, for I said, ‘Sing the old funeral song.’ 

Ned gaped, then laughed long and loud. ‘I’m hearing things. You can’t mean it. _Purgatory_ , on my Robin’s lips.’ 

‘And tomorrow night Paradise on thine. I haven’t run mad. Or perhaps I have. Purgatory is error. But here on earth there must sometimes be—a coming-through. I can't put it better than that. Do you see?’ 

‘Yes. I think I do,’ he said slowly, and helped me to my feet. 

We sang the ancient dirge over the body of Nell Ashe, strange pandar, and though it could be no more than a quirk of the candlelight it seemed that some of the hideousness of her mortal remains was burnt away, as a wound is cleansed and saved from infection by fire, the scurf scoured from her face and scalp, the sores on her hands made whole. And also, though belike we had simply accustomed our noses to it, it seemed that the taint of putrefaction no longer hung in the close air. 

But there could be no doubt of the transfiguration that the next night wrought, as my dear Edward and I came into our mutual possession. And there having been this one night, there must needs be every night, every night and all. 

*

_Post Scriptum_

When I was not yet forty, I often spoke of myself as an old man, and so I was. Now I am near four score, and touched by a giddy light draught of youth, that breathes from the grave. Men speak of second childishness, but I think this is not quite what they mean. And though I have few teeth, my sight is blear, meat savours little, and anywhere I wish to go, my Ned (who is fat, and has not turned a head in the street these twenty year) must hug me in his arms to take me there, so do I not think I am _sans_ anything, for I have loved. And having loved in the fullness and innocency of my heart, trust that in some very short time, days only mayhap, Christ will receive my soul into the mystery of judgement, if just, moreover merciful, if merciful, moreover loving. I fear nought, for it is a coming in from the scoured and whinny moor, an overcoming of dread, a coming through sealing fire, and a coming home.

**Author's Note:**

>  _haec olim meminisse iuvabit_ , Virgil, _Aeneid_ , Book I: 'perhaps one day it will be a pleasure to remember these things.'
> 
> Pollaiuolo's imagination: specifically, [this bit of it](http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/17.50.99/).
> 
> 'be your communication yea yea, nay nay': Matthew 5:37
> 
> 'And as it is appointed unto men that they shall once die and after that cometh the judgement': Hebrews 9:27
> 
> 'if the tree do fall toward the South, or toward the North, in the place that the tree falleth, there it shall be': Ecclesiastes 11:3
> 
> 'inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me': Matthew 25:40
> 
>  _excepta sapientia nihil melius homini sit a dis inmortalibus datum_ , Cicero, _De Amicitia_ : 'with the exception of wisdom, no better thing has been given to man by the immortal gods'.
> 
> 'by Cynthius smitten': Virgil is plucked by the ear by Apollo in the [sixth Eclogue](http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilEclogues.htm#anchor_Toc533239267), as a rebuke for excessive literary ambition.


End file.
